


things we're all too young to know

by sinagtala (strikinglight)



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Library, Loneliness, M/M, Magical Realism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-20
Updated: 2017-07-20
Packaged: 2018-12-04 15:01:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11557641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strikinglight/pseuds/sinagtala
Summary: “My office is just down the street,” the young man tells him, in that same soft voice. He has a way of pulling his body in when he stands, out of shyness or shame or some quiet self-protective desire. Koushi almost tells him he wishes he’d speak up, almost laughs at how wrong that would be, coming from a librarian. “I don’t—I don’t remember there being a library here.”“Yeah, well.” Koushi grins. “It’s easy to miss if you aren’t looking for it.”





	things we're all too young to know

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nylie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nylie/gifts).



> A writing exercise that spun out way too long; I will learn conciseness one day, I swear it.
> 
> For Ny, who prompted "things you said too quietly." Also for Sab, who helped me imagine the magic library in the first place. <3
> 
> Title from (haha) "The Book of Love" by Gavin James.

_The boy who came through the door this evening had blue eyes and raindrops in his hair._

Koushi looks over at him once, and then once again, and decides _boy_ might be uncharitable. The tall frame, the absentminded wrinkles down the front of his jacket—if this were a story, he’d more accurately be a _young man_. Whatever he is, ten minutes now he’s been by the front door, peering out through the glass, never quite crossing the threshold.

Ten minutes. He probably didn’t mean to come to the library. The rain must have caught him between this place and somewhere else.

When Koushi closes his notebook and rises from the front desk to go to him, the umbrella is ready in his hand.

“Crazy weather, huh? Sometimes it just pours, totally out of nowhere.”

The young man startles a little when addressed. In that moment Koushi sees him a little more clearly, how hollowed-out his face looks when he answers in barely a murmur. “Yes, I... forgot my umbrella.” He looks down, frowning, like he’s asking the toes of his shoes if that’s what _really_ happened. “Or lost it. I can’t remember.”

“You can use mine.”

Koushi decides not to ask his name. It wouldn’t be kind to take a name without a reason, and he seems to have had a long day.

“Sometimes I lend out more than just books,” he says instead. Smiles at the young man, wide and sunny, as if to say that its warmth at least is his to keep. “Be careful on your way home.”

 

* * *

  

The next time he comes, he comes all the way to the front desk.

“You again,” Koushi says, without even raising his head. “No rain this time, though.”

“My office is just down the street,” the young man tells him, in that same soft voice. He has a way of pulling his body in when he stands, out of shyness or shame or some quiet self-protective desire. Koushi almost tells him he wishes he’d speak up, almost laughs at how wrong that would be, coming from a librarian. “I don’t—I don’t remember there being a library here.”

“Yeah, well.” Koushi grins. “It’s easy to miss if you aren’t looking for it. I’m surprised you managed to find it again...?”

“Kageyama.” The young man hears the unspoken question, but his eyes have already drifted from Koushi’s face, past his desk—toward the scattering of empty tables behind and around it, and the forest of shelves beyond, extending back and back into the shadows out of sight. Searching.

“Are you looking for anything in particular, Kageyama-kun?” Koushi thinks he might already know the answer, but he asks anyway, to be polite.

“I don’t think so,” Kageyama says. “Do you mind if I just... browse?”

Not everyone who comes in knows what they’re looking for, at least not right away. Not everyone says yes when Koushi asks if he can help. He’s made his peace with this, learned to meet it with a raised hand and a jaunty shrug.

“Sure. The books are waiting for you.”

 

* * *

 

Maybe the next visit is a day later. Maybe a week, or more. Time is an incidental thing to Koushi, mostly, an inconsequential thing, meant only to be folded and tucked away between the pages of the oldest and the sleepiest of his books.

Koushi tells Kageyama everyone who comes to the library is seeking something, whether they know it or not. Koushi points to the watch on his wrist, shows him how the hands are frozen at five-thirty, and tells him he can stay as long as he wants. At least until he finds what he needs. The hours he loses in here will be waiting for him outside the door when he leaves for the day.

Kageyama shrugs, like it’s all the same to him. “I don’t think anybody’s waiting for me.”

Koushi smiles, doesn’t ask questions. He’s already surrounded by more stories than he needs, and it would be wrong to ask for them from someone who hasn’t offered to share. “That makes two of us. We never close, you know.”

And Kageyama stays, paging through book after book. Poetry, fantasy, history, _Microwave Cooking for One._ When he leaves for the night Koushi gathers them up and puts them back in their places, and he finds their spines almost pulse a little where Kageyama has touched them, the beating of so many living hearts.

 

* * *

 

Kageyama’s habit is to go straight to the shelves, pausing only to accept Koushi’s “good evening” and to nod an answering hello. It’s rare that he stops at the desk, rarer still with the strange thoughtful look Koushi sees now on his face, like he wants to talk.

(Koushi knows it must be wrong to want to talk in a library, but can’t help thinking he’d love a good conversation now and again, even one conducted entirely in whispers.)

“When people come here, what are they looking for, usually?”

Koushi considers this. “Depends. Knowledge, sometimes. Sometimes a good laugh. Sometimes magic. I had a student come in once who was just looking for a quiet place to sleep before an exam.” He laughs to remember the boy, how he had a stutter and a sprinkle of freckles across his nose and cheeks, the way he made himself small, curled up in the armchair by the window. He was a one-time visitor, but unquestionably one of Koushi’s favorite accidents. “They always know what it is when they find it.”

“How will I know what I’m looking for?”

“Same as them, I imagine—you’ll know when you find it.” Koushi can’t help winking at him, can’t help laughing some more when he frowns.

“What if I don’t? What if I never do?”

Impossible, Koushi thinks. It’s just the way things are, how his library operates even in the conspicuous absence of computers or card catalogs. The books do all the work—or, rather, what’s in them does, waiting to be opened up and discovered and taken back out into the world.

All he does is watch over the ones who come here. When it’s time, he sends them on their way.

 

* * *

 

Koushi’s making coffee in the backroom, behind a little blue door behind the shelf full of books on the stars, when Kageyama finds him a second time. It’s the first time they’ve spoken away from his desk. It’s the first time he’s made coffee for himself in—how long, exactly?—a while.

“Are you looking for something too?”

Koushi turns the question over in his head as he watches his coffee bubble. The beans were a gift from another guest, a dream ago, this handsome salaryman with a voice Koushi heard like the heartbeat of the earth in his bones. Another favorite accident; three visits spent reading aloud from poetry books before he remembered the address of a friend who’d moved two cities away.

“That’s a funny question. No one’s ever asked about me before.”

“You said everybody who comes here is looking for something,” Kageyama tells him, persistent. His eyes are looking better lately, bright with all the words he’s read, clear as the sky Koushi sees when he lets his mind wander. “There’s no reason that shouldn’t include you. What were you looking for?”

 _Does_ he remember coming here, though? Koushi’s memories are small fluttering things, easy to miss when they slip between the shelves, fall to the floor and drift under the tables as he tucks the chairs in. It’s easiest to be a caretaker of stories with no story of his own. He thinks that might be what poetic justice is.

(There’d been a house, once, and sisters, friends whose faces he’s forgotten. Sometimes it still feels close to real—not so often now, but sometimes—)

He motions Kageyama into the room, offering him a seat at the table. “Coffee?”

Kageyama nods. Koushi reaches for the pot and pours; it’s a pleasant surprise to find he still knows how to measure out enough coffee for two.

“A place to belong,” he says, pushing the mug across the table. “A place I can help people.”

“Is that the truth?”

“Maybe.” Koushi finds he’s smiling again as he settles in his chair—tries to remember the last guest who made him smile so much, with so few words, but he can’t, any more than he can remember the last person who joined him at this table. “Or maybe I just love books.”

He doesn’t say, _If you keep coming back, maybe one day I’ll tell you the real answer._ He brings his mug to his lips and downs the words in one hot swallow. Dangerous words to say in a library—like a prayer, or a dream, like something you wish would come to you without you having to search for it.

Across the table, hands idle around the warmth of his own mug, Kageyama watches him.

 

* * *

 

Koushi knows it’s the last time when his young man with the blue eyes comes through the door holding the sun.

Or at least, that’s what it looks like at first. It’s bright on the other side of the glass door, sunshine like butter, like breakfast. He’s never visited in the morning before. But today Kageyama stands framed against the light, and it’s only after he’s blinked a few times and shaded his eyes with one hand that Koushi remembers his umbrella.

“Thank you for lending me this.” He stands taller now, too. He’s taken to ironing his work jackets, Koushi’s noticed. They suit him, neatly pressed like that. “The rainy season’s over, so you can have it back now.”

He never did tell Koushi what he was looking for, but all the same Koushi knows this is the last time. Libraries are the sort of place you return to, again and over again, until—

“I should charge you an overdue fine,” he says, smiling. “Will that be all?”

It should be all. But today, Kageyama smiles. Today, his lips move, and he answers—something, some thread of sound shaped a little like _Come with me,_ only it’s too quiet. He always was too quiet, even if he asked so many questions. This question, if he heard it true, will be a gift. A story all its own.  _Come with me?_

Outside, it’s morning. Koushi thinks— _knows_ he has an answer, but he asks anyway, to be polite.

“Come again?”


End file.
